E-Commerce Websites & Shopping Carts

Even if you have a "real world" store, an e-commerce website will help you sell online at all hours of the day without having to pay your staff to monitor phones.

For many companies, offering products online via an e-commerce "store" is an excellent method of taking customer orders and gaining new customers without having to have staff manning the phones 24/7 — and after office hours.

It's an especially attractive alternative to compiling mailing lists, designing and printing catalogs, and mailing them to wherever on an ongoing basis.

Not only that but, done right, e-commerce websites have a good chance of gaining great positions in search engines such as Google. This gives you a two-fold thrust — a website that can perform well in search engines and thereby attract visitors, and that can also sell to customers online when the mood strikes them.

E-commerce — electronic commerce (the selling of goods or services on the Internet) — generally requires what is called a "shopping cart" — a place on your website where customers can browse and select products and then pay for them.

Good shopping carts increase marketing effectiveness and sales by providing a safe and easy way for customers to order your products when the mood strikes them. Such websites also allow potential customers to browse through your store, checking prices and noting items they may want to purchase.

One of the beauties of e-commerce websites is that your sales don't depend on what hours your staff might be present in your office or store to man your phone lines — or even if they're there at all — because customers can order via your website 24/7. This can save you money while increasing sales and customer convenience.

Many subtle niceties that make a website more appealing to potential customers, beginning with how your products are presented. And, at the very least, your store ought to send customers emails confirming their orders, and to let them know when you've shipped. We can automate that process for you, so that you're not taking up valuable time with tracking customer email addresses and manually writing emails to let them know what's happening.

As well, when customers place an order, your store should have a log-in area where they can view their order histories, and see whether their orders have been shipped, and can change their contact information. Sure, customers can call you — but again, that can only happen during your store or office hours. If you're selling a downloadable item, your store ought to let them log in to download the item (and it ought to let them know that they can do so — manually writing emails is the time-consuming way to go.)

And your store ought to give you access to your sales statistics — what's selling the most? How much did you make this month over last month? These are important marketing issues, and ones we address when we build e-commerce websites.

Search Engine Friendly Shopping Carts

Our shopping carts are search engine friendly — which means that search engines can pick up the website pages easily. Moreover, we work with the aim of optimizing them for high positions in the search engines.

Start selling online

Whether you simply want to collect orders and credit card information from your website and process the transactions yourself — or you want a third party company to do the processing in "real time" (that is, "live" while your customer awaits acceptance and confirmation of his credit card charge) — we can implement the right shopping cart solution for you.

We'll help to ensure that the "comfort level" of your customers — and their willingness to place their orders via your website — is increased by ensuring that their private and credit card information is entered on a "secure server" for their protection.

We can also help with online merchant account suggestions and recommendations. For more information, see: How Shopping Carts Work.